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Imagine that your father is one of New York City’s top gangsters, and that you want nothing to do with him or his criminal empire. Now imagine he’s been murdered . . . and the only person who gives a damn is you. Meet Mat Lawrence, a stand-up guy—think Gary Cooper—who’s got one thing on his mind: revenge.
The last place Mat wants to go is back to New York, but that’s where the killers are, and he won’t stop until they’re dead . . . or he is. And there’s only one man who can help him track them down: his father’s criminal attorney—the Mouthpiece.
But there’s more than a desire for revenge at play in this deadly game. When Mat’s old man went down, a million dollars went missing. Put it all together—a cold-blooded murder and a cool million gone—and it’s a pretty good bet that the one thing Mat is sure to find is some serious heat.
Mouthpiece was originally published in the September, 1934, edition of Thrilling Detective. That same year, as the youngest writer ever to serve as president of the New York Chapter of the American Fiction Guild, L. Ron Hubbard sought to promote greater accuracy in the writing of detective and mystery stories. To that end he invited the coroner to speak to the Guild members over lunch. He later recounted that “they would go away from the luncheon the weirdest shade of green.” But, we can assume, they also went away better informed. Years later, expanding his studies in the area, Hubbard became a special officer with the Los Angeles Police Department.
Also includes the tales of mystery, Flame City, the story of one man’s harrowing attempt to save his father and the city from a serial arsonist; Calling Squad Cars!, in which a police dispatcher goes to extraordinary lengths to bring down a gang of bank robbers after he is accused of working with them; and Grease Spot, the story of a former racecar driver, now the owner of a wrecking company, who plays fast and loose with the police . . . and may have to pay for it.
* A Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award Winner
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The four crime stories in this collection hark back to a time when the gangster's greatest enemy was an everyman with a righteous chip on his shoulder, and when pulpsmiths like Hubbard (The Phantom Patrol) reveled in writing up their dust-ups in Thrilling Detective, Phantom Detective, and other crime fiction magazines. In the title tale as well as in the arson extravaganza "Flame City," indignant sons single-handedly combat crooks who have discredited their fathers' reputations. "Calling Squad Cars!" is the tale of a disgraced police dispatcher who decides to clear his name by going after the mobster who set him up. "Grease Spot" tells of a wrecker who illegally accesses the police band to get the jump on tow jobs, and who then has to hold off the hoods for the boys in blue when his latest job detours into criminal territory. All four stories show Hubbard's grasp of the hardboiled idiom and his skill at slinging the lingo necessary to make these tales memorable until the next month's magazines replaced them at the newsstands.
